No longer prostitute to Wealth,
amoung the aery show
The Lyric Muse accompanies
The Marseillaise below.

And how the gales of Freedom move,
Like wildfire's leap and fall,
Or north wind's through autumnal grass,
The red flags over all.

Yes! Ther's our place, whatever flames
Those nearing clouds display,
Tho' much they mean to footpath sneaks
And the wise who stop away.

O'Dowd a child prodigy that read Milton's, "Paradise Lost", at age 8, was
born in Beaufort Victoria. He was employed as a head teacher at a Catholic
School in Ballarat, but was dismissed for heresy. He opened up his own
school in Beaufort. In 1886, at age 20, he moved to Melbourne where he
found employment in 1887 as an Assistant - Librarian in the Supreme Court
Library, working for the Victorian colonial and State government until 1935,
retiring as Chief Parliamentary Draughtsman.

He joined the Melbourne Lyceum, the educational and social arm of the
Australian Secular Society in 1886. In 1888, a number of anarchists
associated with the A.S.A, who were members of the Melbourne Anarchist club
(Australia's first anarchist group formed in 1886) were expelled from the
A.S.A. O'Dowd joined the progressive Lyceum, which was made up of the
anarchists Monty Miller, Upham, Brookhouse and Nicholls, as well as other
radical members who had been expelled from the Melbourne Lyceum. He had
become the editor of the Tetor in 1888 just before the split.

His poem "Hoist the Flag" Lyceum published in the Lyceum Tutor in 1888,
outlined ideas that were very similar to anarchism. O'Dowd had become a
friend of the Melbourne anarcho-communist Jack Andrews,
and in 1897, O'Dowd and two others set up the radical paper Tocsin. In 1898, he was co-editor
of Tocsin with Jack Andrews. He continued to be an editor, contributor and
financial supporter of Tocsin until Andrews died of tuberculosis in 1903.
During these six years, he published numerous radical poems, and used the
pages of the Tocsin to express his opposition to Federation and The Boer
War. In 1902, he issued a pamphlet "Conscience and Democracy" which opposed
the Boer War.

Like Chummy Fleming who protested the opening of the first parliament in 1901, O'Dowd saw grave problems in Federation and wrote a clause by clause critique of the draft Federal Bill. He saw State/Federal rivalry as a future danger to working people. He warned of the unspecified powers given to the Governor General, which were ultimately used by Sir John Kerr, the CIA's 'Our Man in Australia', in dismissing the Whitlam Labor Government in 1975.

Between 1903 to 1921, O'Dowd turned his attention to poetry and published
six poetry books. Dawnward (1903), The Silent Land (1906), Dominion of the
Boundary (1907), The Seven Deadly Sins (1909), The Bush (1912) and Alma
Venus (1921). His most well known pamphlet "a plea for purpose in poetry",
Poetry Militant, was published in 1909. In it he asks, "Why should poetry
be militant nowadays? I hear some ask Because This is an Age of Revolt
and Reconstruction, because the Poet is the father and mother of wise
rebellion and because he, being in touch with the Infinite, the Permanent is
most potent and far-reaching stimulator of Reconstruction".

O'Dowd was married and had five sons. In 1920, he left his wife and moved
in with Marie Pitt, the editor of the Victorian Socialist
and also a poet. He lived with her until her death in 1948. He and Pitt became members of the Unitarian
church, denied the trinity and saw the historical Jesus Christ as an anarchist.

Although O'Dowd grappled constantly with the conflict between his work for
the government and his radical politics, according to the Australian
Dictionary of Biography (ADB) "His optimism about human destiny never
failed", and a few months before his death at 87, "he affirmed his almost
religious belief in anarchist communism".

Notes on the poem, May Day

The "Yarra-banker" in the eigth verse of O'Dowd's poem May Day is a reference to the anarchist, Chummy Fleming, comparing him with "Christ". During the 1920's and 30's the Communist Party had control of the organisation of May Day in Melbourne. Chummy use to start ahead of the march and walk slowly, so that eventually he appeared to lead the march with his red flag emblazoned with the word 'anarchy'.

O'Dowd also included a reference to the American poet, Walt Whitman, as Whitman was a formative poetic influence. Correspondence between O'Dowd and Whitman is held by the National Library of Australia, as well as being published in Whitman's complete works.

I'm heavily in debted to P.D. Gardner, the author of Mountain Echoes
(confessions of a fellow traveller), No 68, for this article. Mountain
Echoes appears on the AA website and will appear as an insert in the
Anarchist Age Weekly Review from this issue No 464. P.D. Gardner, a regional
historian, who lives in East Gippsland, can be contacted via
Ngarak Press
P.O Box 18 Ensay Victoria Australia
http://www.users.bigpond.com/ngarak/

Of interest is Bernard O'Dowd's Socialism by Frank Bongiorno in Labour History Issue 77, November 1999.
An academic paper which does not explore in great depth the anarchist influences on O'Dowd, such as his editorial relationship with Jack Andrews.